In early June, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu announced an agreement on a “roadmap” for the departure of Syrian Kurdish forces from the north Syrian town of Manbij. This agreement, which appears to call for joint U.S.-Turkish management of the area, ameliorates one of the major irritants in Turkish-American relations. Given the depth of disagreement and distrust between Washington and Ankara, it will not return the relationship to any real or imagined glory days. What it will do is help alleviate the compact sentiment in Turkey that the U.S. is conspiring against it. It makes it possible for the U.S. to begin to re-engage Turkey—which, perhaps counter-intuitively, may make it easier, not harder, to check some of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s worst instincts.

This February, the Turkish-American relationship reached rock bottom. Turkish troops had moved into the town of Afrin in northern Syria, and threatened to carry their military mission into Manbij, where U.S. troops were located, supporting the very Syrian Kurdish forces that Turkey sought to dislodge from its border. A top U.S. general stated the U.S. would “respond aggressively” to any Turkish attack on Manbij. This led President Erdoğan to threaten its NATO ally with an “Ottoman slap.” The prospect of a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Turkey, unthinkable only a few years ago, now seemed a distinct possibility. The situation was somewhat defused in mid-February by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s diplomacy, which laid the groundwork for the “roadmap” announced by Pompeo.

The February standoff raised the very real prospect of a total breakdown in America’s alliance with Turkey. It has been long since the two sides behaved like allies. Only recently, President Erdoğan defined his country’s stance as “anti-imperialist,” while a mouthpiece for his government put the matter more succinctly: “Turkey is emerging as a new power center opposing the United States.” Given this attitude, some Americans might say “good riddance.” But the total loss of Turkey would be similar in strategic terms to America’s loss of Iran as an ally in 1979; it would further reduce America’s influence across the Middle East and beyond. This, no doubt, is what has led Moscow to work overtime to accelerate the breakdown of Turkish-American relations: in order to reap the benefits thereof.

What makes Turkey crucial is its geographic position: it lies at the confluence of the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Iran, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean. By definition, given the size of Turkey’s population, economy, and military, its stance is key to U.S. interests in all these theaters. Cooperation with it could amplify and reinforce U.S. goals; its opposition would make achieving these all the more difficult. The simple fact is there are no good alternatives to Turkey. The U.S. military base in Incirlik could conceivably be moved to facilities in Romania, Jordan, Georgia, and/or Iraqi Kurdistan; perhaps it should. But the U.S.-Turkish relationship is deeper than simply a matter of military bases, and no country, or combination of countries, could readily compensate for a loss of Turkey as an ally.

This is not to say that the U.S. should follow a policy of appeasement. Quite to the contrary: for far too long, the U.S. has operated under the assumption that it needs Turkey more than Turkey needs America—a notion that is true only if Washington allows that to be the case, and which ignores the immense leverage the U.S. has on Turkey in the military, security, and economic fields. Turkey’s slide into increasingly authoritarian and Islamist governance, and its pursuit of policies at odds with American interests across the Middle East, is a matter to be taken very seriously. Its hostility to America and its allies—particularly Israel—which Turkish leadership frequently exhibits, needs to be checked, and American leverage applied when needed. But America needs to play a long game in Turkey, looking beyond the current political leadership.

Whether or not anything beyond a tactical accommodation can be reached with Erdoğan’s government, it is in the U.S. interest to restore its relationship with Turkey as a country. This will not be easy: Turkey is more nationalistic than ever, and perceptions of the U.S. as a hostile actor are deeply engrained. But there is a key distinction: Turkey’s Islamists, Erdoğan included, are ideologically predisposed to see America as an enemy. Other political forces in the country, Turkish nationalists included, are not immune from anti-Americanism. Yet it is not hard-wired into their identity. Seeking a common language and common interests with Turkey’s Islamists is a lost cause and foolhardy at best; doing so with Turkish nationalists has worked in the past, and could work again.

In order to devise a policy along these lines, it is imperative to distinguish among the various problems in the bilateral relationship. While there are numerous contentious issues, the serious problems can be boiled down to three distinct sets of issues. In some of these, the controversy is between the U.S. and Turkey as a whole; in others, it is between the U.S. and Erdoğan’s government. In a long-term policy, the U.S. would accordingly need to apply different tactics. The first area of disagreement concerns Syria and the Kurds, issues that can hardly be distinguished from one another. The second area relates to the role of U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom Erdoğan accuses of staging a coup attempt in 2016. And finally, the third set of contentious issues stems from Erdoğan’s Islamism and anti-Western approach.

Syria

The controversy over Syria is, to Turkey, not primarily about Syria. It relates to Turkey’s own Kurdish problem, the most serious issue the country has faced since the republic’s creation in 1923, which in turn intersects with America’s engagements in the Middle East since the 1990 Gulf War. As detailed in a February 2018 article in TAI, Turkish and American interests in the Middle East began to diverge just as the Cold War ended. America’s interventions in Iraq, both in 1990 and 2003, had the effect of significantly worsening the threat posed by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), an organization both the U.S. and EU classify as a terrorist organization. Matters are even worse in Syria: there, the U.S. directly cooperates with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a militia force that the U.S. Director of National Intelligence describes as “the Syrian militia of the PKK.”

America’s approach to the Kurdish issue has been ambivalent. On one hand, the U.S. was once a strong supporter’s of Turkey’s efforts to counter the PKK, a murderous Marxist-Leninist organization built around the personality cult of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan. The U.S. played a key role in helping Turkey apprehend Öcalan in 1999, and used to put significant pressure on European states to crack down on PKK activities on their soil. But from 2003 onward, the U.S. came to view the Kurds of northern Iraq—themselves opponents of the PKK—as America’s most reliable allies there. This was not an insurmountable problem for Ankara, especially since Erdoğan himself embarked on an effort to court the leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan. In Syria, the logic of U.S. policy was similar to that in Iraq: the Syrian Kurds appeared to be the only reliable fighting force that could be used on the ground to confront ISIS.

The key difference was that the YPG was, as America acknowledges, a subsidiary of the PKK. Even this proved tolerable to Ankara because, as former U.S. Ambassador to Ankara and Baghdad James Jeffrey puts it, “We told the Turks that the Kurds were temporary, tactical, and transactional to defeat ISIS.” But once ISIS was on the ropes, the Pentagon this January doubled down on its relationship with the YPG and announced its intention to create a “Border Security Force” consisting mainly of YPG fighters.

This may have made sense to U.S. Central Command, which is preoccupied with the situation in Syria and Iraq, and in securing America’s role on the ground without having to commit thousands of troops that America’s domestic opinion would scarcely permit. And Centcom, in any case, has little love lost for Turkey: memories of the Turkish refusal to allow U.S. troops to open a northern front against Saddam Hussein in 2003 have not faded, and many senior U.S. officials continue to blame Ankara for some of what went wrong in Iraq. But this mixed messaging on Syria’s Kurds comes at a high price. Hatred for the PKK, whose campaign of terror has killed thousands since 1984, is near-universal in Turkey. The notion that America is in cahoots with a PKK subsidiary infuriates Turks of every political persuasion, with the possible exception of the pro-Kurdish HDP, itself not devoid of PKK linkages. And why would America set up a border force in Syria? To Turks, the only conclusion is that the U.S. is seeking to contain and undermine Turkey.

By inadvertently fueling such suspicions, the U.S. is effectively helping Erdoğan shore up support among otherwise skeptical Turks, who rally around the flag and leader against this perceived foreign threat. Pompeo’s roadmap begins to address this problem.

The Gülen Factor

Why, are so many Turks so suspicious of America? Part of the answer lies in Erdoğan’s promotion of conspiracy theories, which we will get to shortly. But an equally important reason is the Gülen factor. Since 1999, this reclusive preacher has resided in self-imposed exile in the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, from where he directs a large and opaque global network of schools and civic associations. His disciples have been focused on infiltrating the Turkish state since the 1970s, a fact that led Erdoğan to strike a tactical alliance with Gülen in the early days of his tenure, which helped him tremendously in consolidating power. Erdoğan fancies himself the embodiment of Turkey’s Sunni Muslims. Since Gülen, too, is a Sunni Muslim, Erdoğan assumed the Gülenists would remain loyal to him. But over time, it became clear that Gülenists were pursuing their own power and influence, and were not going to defer to Erdoğan. This led to an overt power struggle between the two—in effect, an Islamist civil war for control over the Turkish state. Not without reason, Erdoğan blames Gülen for orchestrating the July 2016 coup attempt which led to the death of over 200 people and to the bombing of the country’s parliament.

The notion that Gülen is a CIA creation has been widespread in Turkey for decades now. How else, Turks wonder, would such an obscure network be able to spread globally, so that it at one point operated schools in 160 countries? And why would an Islamist cleric choose the United States as his residence? Seeking to rebut such conspiracies is a fool’s errand. But again, these are not fringe beliefs among Turkey’s Islamists. They are held compactly across almost every political and social strata in Turkey. Thus, any sign that the U.S. is protecting Gülen serves the purpose of shoring up support for Erdoğan. Particularly following the failed 2016 coup, even die-hard secularist opponents of Erdoğan have rallied to his support, with a simple logic: Erdoğan is the only person who has the strength and force to root out the Gülenists from Turkey’s state institutions, and make sure they could never again get close to power.

Does this mean the U.S. should simply hand Gülen over to Erdoğan and close down all his activities in America? The U.S. is a nation of laws, and Gülen a Permanent Resident of the United States. Leaving aside the question whether Gülen could be expected to receive a fair trial in Turkey—a doubtful proposition at best—Turkey’s extradition request does not appear to have provided enough evidence to tie Gülen to the coup attempt or any other criminal offenses. Erdoğan’s government considers the Gülen Network a terrorist organization, and applies collective punishment to everyone it considers part of the network, and would like the U.S. and Europe to do the same. But as EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove noted, “You need not only circumstantial evidence . . . but concrete substantive data which shows that they were involved.” Similarly, the U.S. cannot take legal action unless evidence shows the individual involvement of a particular person in coup planning.

Circumstantial evidence can, however, lead the U.S. to re-evaluate its approach to the Gülen network. It does have redeeming qualities—few Islamic clerics have taken out full-page ads to condemn ISIS and jihadi terrorism, for example. But given the amount of evidence linking the network to the coup, and its involvement in the jailing of secularist Turks on fraudulent grounds, this network can hardly be considered an asset to U.S. interests. Not staying at that, there are serious allegations that the many Gülen-affiliated charter schools in the United States have engaged in systematic fraud that is under FBI investigation.

Any sign that the U.S. is taking accusations against the Gülen network seriously, and investigating its activities in the United States, would go a long way toward managing the widespread perception that the U.S. is protecting what most Turks consider a terrorist organization. That, in turn, would play an important role in rebuilding trust for the United States in Turkish society—and rob Erdoğan of a tool to whip up anti-American hatred.

Islamism

The final, and deepest, bone of contention between the U.S. and Turkey is the increasingly Islamist direction of President Erdoğan’s tenure. Erdoğan started out as a politician who parted with the Islamism of his predecessors, even setting up a new party that split off from the old-school Islamists of the past. But as he consolidated power, he gradually returned to the Islamist rhetoric of his youth, and adopted an increasingly autocratic approach to ruling the country. By necessity, U.S. foreign policy must deal with autocrats everywhere; but in Turkey’s case, the authoritarian tendency has been coupled with a growing anti-American posture in Turkish foreign policy, coupled with a decidedly anti-Zionist, and frequently anti-Semitic rhetoric and approach to Middle Eastern affairs.

Erdoğan’s tendencies were visible already in the early days of his tenure, as he embraced Hamas following its power grab in 2006. No wonder: Turkey’s Islamist movement, from which Erdoğan stems, is heavily colored by the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch. After the Arab upheavals of 2011, Turkey increasingly adopted an ideological, sectarian foreign policy that sought to assist the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist organizations, in securing power across the Middle East and North Africa. This put Turkey directly at odds with U.S. interests, as it egged on Muhammad Morsi in his ill-fated attempt to grab power through unconstitutional means in Egypt, and supported extremist groups in the Syrian civil war. Of even more concern, perhaps, has been Ankara’s naked hostility to the State of Israel, and Erdoğan’s recurrent promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, also a legacy of the ideological environment that formed him as a politician. In recent months, Erdoğan has even lashed out at the reforms being carried out in Saudi Arabia, decrying the very notion of “moderate” Islam, while his party’s mouthpiece drums up conspiracy theories of American attempts to rob Muslims of their hold on the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

Syria and Gülen are important issues, but they are just that—concrete issues where state interests may diverge, and where it is possible, through diplomacy and other means of statecraft, to overcome differences. By contrast, Erdoğan’s ideology is a much deeper impediment, an existential challenge to the Turkish-American alliance. If this ideology becomes hegemonic in Turkey, the alliance is doomed.

Happily, this is not destined to happen. Erdoğan has, without doubt, made Turkish public opinion more anti-Western and anti-Semitic than it was before he assumed power. But the societal resistance to Erdoğan’s Islamization efforts is remarkable, not least in the field of education, as Turkish parents stubbornly refuse to send their children to the underperforming religious schools that Erdoğan’s education ministry favors. Erdoğan also finds it increasingly difficult to obtain the support of more than just shy of half of the population. In spite of his control of administrative resources, superior funding, and near-saturation level of supportive media coverage, it is a testament to society’s resistance that in the current election campaign, his victory is not a foregone conclusion. The main opposition candidate, Muharrem Ince, could well win a second round, if the election is conducted fairly—a big if.

Indeed, within the Turkish state—whose institutions have begun to reassert their influence, particularly over foreign policy—there is considerable reluctance to embrace Erdoğan’s Islamist ideology. In other words, both within state and society, Erdoğan’s ideology is polarizing, in sharp contrast to society’s strong support for his stance on Syria and on the Gülen movement.

This has obvious implications for the United States. First, the U.S. should take Turkey’s interests on Syria and on the Gülen issue into account. This does not mean meeting every Turkish demand. But it does mean seeking accommodation on these issues, where Erdoğan enjoys the support of a near-consensus of Turkey. By contrast, on issues where his position is most polarizing—which happens to be the issues that in the long term will matter most to the United States—that is where the U.S. should push back assertively.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has to do a much better job at reaching beyond Erdoğan, and finding ways to talk to other actors and institutions in Turkish society. The Roadmap in Syria provides such an opportunity: it could help Centcom develop relations with Turkey’s military, as European Command has done for decades. This won’t be easy at first, but could prove crucial in the long term. The U.S. must also reach out to nationalist political parties and organizations in Turkey, which all too often get swept up in anti-American rhetoric—which Americans have hardly tried to mitigate.

But just as Syria was the most acute crisis that threatened a direct confrontation between Turkey and the U.S., it is also in Syria that the restoration of a relationship with Turkey, and of American influence in the country, could begin. This will only succeed if the Trump Administration takes a long-term and strategic approach that centers on Turkey, the country, as opposed to Erdoğan, the person. Pompeo’s roadmap could be the start of such an approach.

In the post-Soviet space as well as the Middle East, Western leaders have largely failed to heed ample evidence that the goals of the Russian leadership are fundamentally opposed to those of the EU and the US. Whereas Moscow seeks to counter Western influence and roll back the US’s role in the world, the West has proposed a win–win approach, seeking to convince Moscow that its ‘true’ interests should lead it to cooperate with the West. When this has not worked, Western leaders have ‘compartmentalised’, isolating areas of agreement from areas of disagreement. This approach has come to the end of the road because the assumptions that undergird it are false. So long as Western powers fail to understand the fundamental incompatibility of their interests with the deeply anti-Western interests of the current power brokers in the Kremlin, they are unlikely to develop policies that achieve success.

Svante E. Cornell is Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Center affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

Why Turkey is Authoritarian

RIGHT-WING RULE FROM ATATÜRK TO ERDOGAN

For the past century, Turkey has been seen by many as always on the verge of becoming a truly Westernized liberal democracy—only to have democracy lose ground time and again to authoritarianism. Why has that been the pattern, and what role have culture, identity, and religion played in Turkey’s struggle with democracy? This book presents a clear analysis and explanation, showing how cultural prejudices about the Muslim world have informed ideological positions in a way that has ultimately disabled the left within Turkey, leaving it unable to transcend artificial cultural categories and promote broad democratic solidarity. As the populist right mounts challenges around the world, the history of “democracy” in Turkey offers instructive lessons for activists there and beyond.

Recent terrorist attacks in Istanbul, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and New York City have been committed by perpetrators with an origin in Central Asia. The CACI-SRSP Joint Center has collected resources from its publication on the topics of terrorism and Islamic radicalism in Central Asia on this page.

For press inquiries: the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute is part of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington DC (202-543-1006); the Silk Road Studies Program is part of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.(+46-734-150065) Please click here for further contact information.

At the turn of 2016 and 2017, events took place in parts of Chechnya that again challenged the triumphant statements of local pro-Moscow and federal authorities that the jihadist-inspired insurgency in this North Caucasian republic was eradicated. Aside from illustrating the latent character of armed conflict in the region in general and in Chechnya in particular, the recent upsurge of violence in Chechnya contains particularities that may have far-reaching consequences. Sporadic attacks against the Kadyrov regime will likely recur in the years to come and intensify should the regime’s grip on power weaken

Central Asia has never ranked high on U.S. priorities. That is unlikely to change under the Trump Administration. Yet recent developments in Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan, do offer an opportunity to advance U.S. interests through a greater economic-political presence in the region, whilst also countering growing Chinese economic dominance and Russian efforts at military hegemony at a relatively low cost. The two key countries in this possible opportunity for the U.S. are Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

China's gradually increasing economic role in Central Asia since the early 2000s is unsurprising considering the region's geographic proximity to China's dynamic economy. In this context, Beijing has carefully shaped a military strategy in the region, particularly in neighboring Tajikistan. In September 2016, Beijing offered to finance and build several outposts and other military facilities (in addition to the Gulhan post, which was opened in 2012) to beef up Tajikistan's defense capabilities along its border with Afghanistan, whereas China's and Tajikistan's militaries performed a large counter-terrorism exercise in October 2016. These unexpected actions have raised concerns in Russia over rising Chinese influence in Tajikistan.

On December 17, 2016, a shootout in central Grozny between members of the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and local security forces claimed the lives of three militants and one police officer. On December 18, a counter-terrorist operation (CTO) launched in the aftermath resulted in the death of four more insurgents, whereas four remaining members of a militant cell were arrested. Three police officers were killed and one injured. While the confrontation between militants and police in Grozny was only the fourth conflict-related incident in the republic during 2016, it demonstrates that ISIS still has the capacity to target Chechen security forces.

Abu Zar al-Burmi was one of the most prominent Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) muftis and a close associate of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda. Despite pledging loyalty to the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2015, he has recently renounced his support of ISIS and is preaching under the banner of the Imam Bukhari Brigade (IBB), which is a Syria-based IMU offshoot that is loyal to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The case of Abu Zar shows how, since the rise of ISIS in 2014, al-Qaeda has defended its stake in Central Asian jihadism.

Recent evidence shows a gradual increase in Chinese military activity in Central Asia, particularly with Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, although China has for years denied any military interest in the region. In October, PLA and Tajik forces jointly participated in counterterrorism exercises in Tajikistan near the border with Afghanistan, following earlier activity in 2016. Whereas Tajikistan was then silent, this time it publicized the exercises, which aroused a visible anxiety in the Russian media although the Russian government has hitherto been unwilling to comment on this issue. China’s initiative could imply a major new development in Chinese policy and in Central Asia’s overall security, with lasting implications for the region.

On December 4, 2016, three months after the death of Uzbekistan’s first President Islam Karimov, the country held new presidential elections. The Prime Minister and acting Interim President Shavkat Mirziyoev became president-elect by defeating three competitors in a highly asymmetric campaign characterized by the utilization of so-called administrative resources. Yet Mirziyoev’s campaign was also an explicit demonstration of new domestic and foreign political trends in post-Karimov Uzbekistan towards more liberal reforms. The campaign also revealed rising new expectations on the part of the Uzbek nation after a quarter-century of one-person rule.

Uzbekistan’s and Tajikistan’s independence in 1991 raised the Shakespearean “To be or not to be?” question concerning the ambitious construction of a dam on the mountainous Vakhsh river in Tajikistan, which would embody the Rogun Hydro Power Station. Uzbekistan – a downstream country – has permanently and vigorously rejected and resisted the project referring to numerous risks associated with Rogun for all downstream countries. Uzbekistan’s president has been the principal political antagonist of this project. Two months after his death in September 2016, Tajikistan’s president has decided to move on with the project.

Few people think about trends in the Caucasus with reference to or in the context of Russia’s Syrian intervention. But Moscow does not make this mistake. From the beginning, Moscow has highlighted its access to the Caucasus through overflight rights and deployment of its forces in regard to Syria, e.g. sending Kalibr cruise missiles from ships stationed in the Caspian Sea to bomb Syria. Therefore we should emulate Russia’s example and seriously assess military trends in the Caucasus in that Syrian context.

Since the death of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov in early September, signs have emerged of a thaw in relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbor Tajikistan. In the years since independence, bilateral relations have been plagued by mistrust, disputes over water resources and outright hostility. Both sides have adopted a series of punitive measures against each other. Although acting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has expressed interest in “resetting” relations with Tajikistan, any improvement will be tempered by the ongoing conflict over Tajikistan’s planned hydropower plants.

The last week of August 2016 saw two large-scale Counter-Terrorist Operations (CTOs) in the North Caucasus republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan, followed by another CTO conducted in the second week of September. This relatively low-scale increase in military confrontations between militants and security forces in the region nonetheless indicates a steady recovery of non-ISIS Islamist cells, which have been in decline since the emergence of ISIS in the region. While these recent developments may not indicate a revival of the local Islamist insurgency, they indicate that local insurgent jama’ats are still present and active in the region.

On June 8, 2016, FSU Oil & Gas Monitor quoted former UK Energy Minister Charles Hendry as saying that gas from Turkmenistan could reach European markets by various different means, including “overland routes through Iran.” It is unlikely that Hendry would make such an announcement without having received encouraging signals from both Tehran and Ashkhabad. The prospect of gas deliveries from Turkmenistan to European markets is disconcerting for Moscow, which regards the monopolization of gas supply to Europe as one of its major geopolitical and geoeconomic goals.

The North Caucasus insurgency has weakened dramatically in recent years. While Chechnya-based jihadist groups now number a few dozen fighters, jamaats operating in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay have been nearly wrecked. In Ingushetia, a few insurgent groups remain numbering a couple of dozen members. In Dagestan, the epicenter of the regional insurgents, several jamaats have survived and number around a hundred active members. Indicative of the unprecedented weakening of the North Caucasus insurgency is the jihadists’ inability to elect an amir of the Caucasus Emirate: since the liquidation of the last amir Magomed Suleimanov in mid-August 2015, the jihadist resistance has been beheaded as it lacks a formal leadership. Yet has the regional insurgency indeed been defeated?

Many accounts allege that the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has expanded to northern Afghanistan and intends to infiltrate Central Asia from there. Taking a closer look, however, it becomes apparent that virtually all such claims lack a sound foundation and that the remaining, more specific hints like reported sightings of black flags also stand on shaky ground. Consequentially, and contrary to the eastern parts of Afghanistan, there is no compelling evidence of a presence of the self-styled Caliphate in northern Afghanistan and, hence, also no immediate threat to Central Asia.

50 years ago, Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent hosted a summit ending the India-Pakistan war of 1965, resulting in the Tashkent Declaration. It was, so to speak, a Soviet “Camp David” aimed at bringing two antagonists – India and Pakistan – to peace. The SCO summit of June 2016 was, symbolically speaking, a second – multilateral – platform created in the same place, Tashkent, for the same two states to restore peace. Yet this summit did not appear to be a second Tashkent “Camp David,” but rather a challenge for the SCO itself.

Recent months have seen increased attacks on journalists and human rights activists in Chechnya. Such attacks have long become characteristic of the Moscow-backed Chechen authorities’ attitude to any form of dissent, both within and outside the North Caucasus republic. While most human rights organizations and journalists were pushed out of Chechnya in the 2000s, the recent wave of violence has been particularly aggressive and threaten to remove the last resort for complaints on human rights violations as well as the only remaining sources of data on such violations in the republic.

Kazakh experts have recently begun to call water the “liquid gold of the 21st century,” as all states in the Central Asian region face greater demand for water concurrent with a significant decline in water supply. The Aral Sea – which became a symbol of environmental mismanagement and environmental catastrophe at the end of the 20th century – shows that sustainable development policies can help to deal with even the most difficult water issues. Conversely, however, mismanagement and border conflicts over water might worsen the situation, leading to further political and economic tensions. The current question is whether Kazakhstan can collaborate with other Central Asian states in saving and perhaps reviving the Aral Sea.

On May 21, a U.S. drone attack killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour and taxi driver Mohammad Azam near Nushki in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Mansour was returning from Taftan, Iran, where he had gone for medical treatment, to his residence near the provincial capital Quetta, a 370-mile journey. Mansour and his driver had completed roughly two-thirds of the nine-hour trip. A Pakistani passport and a Computer National Identity Card (CNIC) identifying Mansur as “Wali Muhammad” were found near the wreckage. Mansour’s death, coming nine months after his contested election as “Amir al-Mu'minin” by the Taliban’s Rahbari Shura, has added additional volatility to Afghanistan’s complex political landscape, effectively sidelining any possibility of renewing peace negotiations with the Afghan government as Mansour’s successor seeks to consolidate his position.

A few weeks before the April 2-5 fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia, a border crisis occurred between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on March 18-26. Some observers connected these two events as links in the same chain. Indeed, both cases revolve around so-called frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space; where one of the conflicting sides is a CSTO member and the other is not; and where speculations proliferate of a hidden Russian hand in both the instigation and mediation of the clashes. The two conflicts can be seen as a by-product of the same process – the continuing divergence of the former single Soviet space.

Throughout 2015, Kazakhstan celebrated the 450th anniversary of what it regards as the beginning of its statehood as a major national event. This extraordinary interest in a seemingly academic subject had clear political undertones: Kazakhstan is not an “artificial” state, as sometimes proclaimed by representatives of the Kremlin. The country’s continuous process of distancing itself from Russia has been coupled with repression against suspected proponents of separatism in Northern Kazakhstan, populated by considerable numbers of ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers. Despite the existence of clearly pro-Russian attitudes in this region, Moscow has not supported them out of fear that it could raise extremist forms of nationalism in Russia, which would be highly problematic for the Kremlin.

For more than a decade after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S., the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was the “bogeyman” of Central Asian militancy. It was the most well-known militant group in Central Asia and abroad, even though it was in exile in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the protection of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Years of drone strikes and counter-insurgency operations failed to eliminate the IMU. Ironically, however, it was neither the U.S. nor coalition forces that destroyed the IMU. Rather, it was the Taliban who liquidated the IMU in late 2015 as punishment for its “betrayal” of the Taliban (and al-Qaeda) by pledging loyalty to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS). This will change the nature of the militant threat to Central Asia and force a reconsideration of Uzbekistan’s counter-extremism measures.

Russia’s and Tajikistan’s joint antiterrorist exercise on March 15-20 involved five Tajik training ranges, and showcased bilateral security cooperation. The exercise seemed routine, consistent with each country’s national security concerns; however a number of factors coalesced on Moscow’s planning and deployment side to make it both unique and potentially revealing. Buoyed by its recent experience of military conflict in Ukraine and Syria, Russia’s Armed Forces display increased confidence in supporting a more pro-active Russian foreign policy posture. The elements it deployed in Tajikistan for the exercise contain strategic messages for the benefit of other actors and Russia’s potential adversaries in Central Asia: for regional governments, the message is one of reassurance and renewed confidence.

The states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are in for a rough ride if recent Russian national security documents and speeches genuinely represent the Kremlin’s worldview. Not only do these texts veto their membership in NATO, but they exclude mutually profitable partnerships for these countries with the European Union and other Western institutions, constrain their domestic development, and encourage the suppression of civil liberties by warning of fictitious Western plots to change their regimes under the guise of democracy promotion and human rights.

Moscow has stated that among its defense and security priorities for 2016, Central Asia and the South Caucasus will top its agenda. Kavkaz 2016, the main strategic military exercise of the year, will take place in the Southern Military District (MD), while Tsentr 2015 occurred in Central MD with among its vignettes a rehearsal of intervention in Central Asia. Surprisingly in this context, the Defense Ministry plans to restructure the 201st Base in Tajikistan from divisional to brigade status. This initiative is driven by Moscow’s growing concerns about the future of Central Asian security as it faces multiple potential threats stemming from Afghanistan and Islamic State (ISIS). But paradoxically, Moscow’s latest moves to strengthen the basing of its forces in Tajikistan serves as an indicator of official perceptions that the region could suffer a serious security challenge.

On November 25-26, Azerbaijani law enforcement carried out a special operation in Nardaran, a township on the northern edge of the Absheron peninsula located 25 kilometers northeast of the capital’s center. The purpose of the special operation was to break the backbone of the Muslim Unity group, a purportedly militant Shiite organization. The context and implications of the Nardaran events have received little attention in Western media, despite the concerns raised both within and outside the region about Azerbaijan finding itself on the brink of religiously inspired civil unrest.

In early November, John Kerry made a long overdue trip to Central Asia, becoming the first Secretary of State to visit all five Central Asian countries in one diplomatic tour. His agenda focused on reassuring the regional governments that the United States cares about their concerns, specifically Afghanistan and religious extremism. Kerry also highlighted U.S. support for region-wide economic integration, ecological protection, and cultural and humanitarian cooperation. He further developed bilateral cooperation with each Central Asian government. However, there were no major agreements or blockbuster initiatives announced during Kerry’s visit. It will require sustained follow-through by the current and next U.S. administrations to achieve enduringly positive results.

A number of initiatives have combined to make the development of continental transport and trade across the heartland of Eurasia a reality rather than a mere vision. Some of these have been external, while many have been internal to the region. Yet Europe, which launched the visionary TRACECA program in the early 1990s, is largely absent from the scene today. Yet if Europe works with Central Asian states, it stands to benefit greatly from this process. This would involve work to make the transport corridors more attuned to market logic; to promote the development of soft infrastructure; to pay attention to the geopolitics of transport and support the Caucasus and Caspian corridor; and not least, to look ahead to the potential of linking Europe through Central Asia not just to China, but also to the Indian subcontinent.

In early October, Russia's Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu announced that Russian navy warships based in the Caspian Sea had fired a total of 26 missiles at the positions of the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria. The minister claimed that all the 11 targets, located around 1,500 kilometers from the warships, were destroyed over two days. Russian authorities and pro-regime media have considered the strikes a big success. While information soon resurfaced that some cruise missiles had landed on Iranian soil, the fact that the October strike is definite proof of the failed attempts to turn the landlocked water basin into a demilitarized zone has received less attention.

During the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2015 in New York, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kazakhstan’s, Kyrgyzstan’s, Tajikistan’s, Turkmenistan’s and Uzbekistan’s Ministers of Foreign Affairs to set up the new C5+1 format for dialogue between the U.S. and Central Asian states. As a first manifestation of this dialogue platform, Kerry made a Central Asian tour in early November. The C5+1 meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, took place in the context of global geopolitical turbulence that has raised Central Asia’s profile in U.S. global strategy

Moscow has recently undertaken several actions aiming to increase Russia’s influence in the Middle East and Central Asia. On August 23-28, 2015, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes several members from Central Asia, undertook military exercises in Russia. Russian authorities stated that the maneuvers aimed to help CSTO members develop means to effectively move airborne forces and other troops to conflict zones, including in Central Asia. The exercises partly served to address a real concern on the part of Russia as well as other CSTO members over the rise of the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS). However, Russia sees ISIS not only as a threat but also as an opportunity for both increasing Russia’s influence in Central Asia and providing a pretext for its venture in the Middle East.

The deepening of Russia’s military presence in Syria and its direct involvement in aiding the Assad regime during the Syrian crisis is a game changing step in the geostrategic context of the Middle East. This is Russia’s third move during the last eight years to change the strategic status quo in the greater Middle East by means of military force. Russia’s new step in Syria aims to influence the geopolitical makeup of the Middle East following the collapse of the Sykes-Picot order. Russia aims to establish itself as a key player from the Caspian Basin in the east, via the Black Sea, to the Eastern Mediterranean.

On October 4, Kyrgyzstan held parliamentary elections marked by significant improvements in the country’s democratic development. The elections have demonstrated the viability of Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 constitution, which delegates more powers to the parliament and aims to prevent the emergence of autocratic political center. Fourteen political parties competed, and six were able to pass the national and regional thresholds to win seats.

Russia’s recent military engagement in Syria and calls for the establishment of an international coalition against the terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) has produced renewed interest in Moscow’s policies toward the jihadist quasi-state. Against this background, while many have speculated about Moscow’s true intentions in the Middle East, relatively little attention has been paid to Moscow’s interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus in the context of its increasingly vocal rhetoric of fighting ISIS. Moscow is actively utilizing the risks and threats stemming from the ISIS to boost its clout in the near and far abroad.

Rather than resulting from external factors, as the regime has argued, the recent violence in Tajikistan erupted from within the state itself. Elites within the Tajik state continually compete for political influence and economic gain. These struggles occasionally break out into violence. Ironically, such conflicts are actually useful for the regime. They allow it to legitimize a purge of potentially disloyal members and a crackdown on other opponents. By blaming the latest conflict on the country’s leading opposition party, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT), the regime legitimized its move to ban the party and arrest its leading members.

Recent months have seen North Caucasian amirs pledging allegiance to the terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS). Many have pointed to this process as a sign of the changing paradigm of the regional resistance, which is being transformed into – or absorbed by – the global jihadist insurgency. But these assumptions can be challenged by a look at the internal dynamics, the distance from key hotbeds of jihadist violence, and the limits of the North Caucasian insurgency. While ISIS may have some impact on the North Caucasian jamaats, it is likely to be rather limited and indirect.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held its annual summit on June 9-10, 2015, in the Russian town of Ufa, which was an historical turning point in the organization’s evolution. It adopted a Development Strategy towards 2025 and admitted India and Pakistan as full members. Uzbekistan has taken over the Chairmanship of the SCO from Russia for the next one year period. During the summit, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov expressed concerns revealing Tashkent’s reluctant acknowledgement of the fact that from now on the SCO will be more than just a Central Asia-focused structure.

On June 22-24, Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, hosted a third meeting of the Uzbek-Tajik intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation. Unlike the two previous sessions, which were organized in Dushanbe in August 2002 and February 2009, this year’s bilateral trade talks took place against the backdrop of an emerging détente between the two Central Asian neighbors. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are currently confronted with a host of shared challenges ranging from the threat of radical Islam to socioeconomic instability, while their bilateral relationship is still constrained by unsettled disputes from the past.

Central Asia is a key region that many believe has fallen into the crosshairs of the terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS). Local governments are gravely concerned about returning fighters and possible ISIS infiltration in the region, and foreign powers, especially neighboring Russia and China, have expressed their deep concerns. This grim picture, however, obscures a more complex, and perhaps more accurate, story. Might the specter of ISIS have less to do with its on-the-ground ability to destabilize the region and more to do with the geopolitical concerns of those who are stating these threats?

With the recent death of its leader and the decisions by numerous field commanders in Dagestan and Chechnya to disassociate themselves with the organization, analysts are wondering if the Caucasus Emirate can endure. The terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) has emerged as the latest paradigm for resistance to Russian rule in the Caucasus. It is, however, only the latest in a long line of such paradigms to take root in the region, competing with the Caucasus Emirate, Chechen nationalism and other forms of ethnic separatism. What is the outlook for ISIS as a paradigm for resistance in the North Caucasus?

The slowing Russian economy suffered a triple shock in the form of Western economic sanctions, falling oil prices, and the plummeting Russian ruble in 2014, resulting in a negative impact on Central Asian states. In addition, tighter migration regulations in Russia, in force since early 2015, are having an effect on the flow of migration from Central Asia, particularly from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These three countries rely heavily on remittances from their migrant workers in Russia. The drop in remittances could increase socioeconomic disaffection in parts of Central Asia that are dependent on labor migrants’ earnings.

On April 19, 2015, the Caucasus Emirate’s leader Aliaskhab Kebekov, nom de guerre Ali Abu Mukhammad, was killed in a special operation carried out by Russian elite forces in Dagestan’s Buynaksk district. His death came at a time of profound decline of the North Caucasian jihadists, coupled with the ongoing split in their ranks as an increasing number of fighters and insurgent leaders turn to the Islamic State (IS). Upcoming months will show whether the North Caucasus insurgency, and particularly its Dagestani branch, will become dominated by IS sympathizers and ink up with the global jihad, or remain a largely local endeavor.

Recent months have been hectic for Dagestani jihadists. Since mid-2014, this hotbed of the North Caucasian insurgency has witnessed a gradual split, with numerous Dagestan-based jihadist commanders pledging oath (bayat) to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi. In response, the Caucasus Emirate’s formal leader, Aliaskhab Kebekov, himself a Dagestani, criticized the disloyal commanders for splitting the ranks of the local insurgency. In mid-February, the newly appointed amir of the Dagestani Vilayat, Kamil Saidov, joined Kebekov in his condemnation of those submitting to Baghdadi’s authority. Given the North Caucasian and Dagestani jamaats' weakening capacity, the ongoing developments in Dagestan could break the unity in this last bastion of the regional insurgency.

The end of 2014 and early 2015 have witnessed a notable reduction in conflict-related violence across the North Caucasus. With the continuous departure of Islamist volunteers from that Russian region to the Middle East, in 2014 the number of casualties, among both militants and security forces, have decreased by more than half, compared to the previous year. While observers associate the current de-escalation of violence with the outflow of large numbers of North Caucasian youth to join Islamic State (IS) and with internal conflicts within the North Caucasus Islamist underground (Caucasus Emirate), reasons behind the recent decline of insurgency-related activities are likely to be more complex.

The recent attacks in Paris against the studio of satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, known for its caricatures of Muhammad, have sparked heated debates in Dagestan. While Dagestanis have primarily focused on evaluating the implications of this single case of lethal violence, their debates have unfolded against the background of increasingly frequent attacks carried out by members of local jihadi groups – jamaats – against targets deemed anti-Islamic according to Salafi dogma.